Posted on 12/04/2014 6:59:29 PM PST by SamAdams76
Several generations of home electronics hobbyists, ham radio enthusiasts and computer nerds spent their growth-spurt years haunting their local RadioShack stores. They can't be happy about the company's long slide toward irrelevance and its looming disappearance as a feature of the retail landscape.
The chain joined the quixotic rush by American retailers to open on Thanksgiving Day, but was one of the very few outside the grocery business to be open as early as 8 a.m. A surer sign of management desperation is hard to conceive--or of management cluelessness, for that matter.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
You might remember how all the stores were ordered to open 8am on Thanksgiving Day and not close until midnight. Evidently the morons running the chain anticipated a Turkey Day run on phone chargers and batteries.
After taking much abuse over this, the chain decided to compromise and close from noon to 5 pm so that workers could dash from the empty stores to spend a few hours with family - before dashing back to re-open the stores for another 7 hours of waiting on a handful of old cranks that might wander in by accident.
This is just not a dignified way to close the final chapter on what used to be a great retail chain.
Last time I was in a Radio Shack, Ronald Reagan was our president and "Back to the Future" was playing at the movies. Phil Collins had the number one album with "No Jacket Required".
I wish I could go into a time machine and go back to 1985 knowing what I know now.
Sears is gone soon too. The jury is out on how long JCP can hold out.
Can you tell me what “Sussudio” means?
Same thing’s gonna happen to Congress if they don’t start doing what is right.
Yes another retailer swirling the bowl. Actually, I never liked the place. Back in the days when they sold their own brand of radios, CD players and such, a friend of mine, who was a big Radio Shack fan, would buy me something from Radio Shack for my birthday or Christmas. Every one of those items died within a year or 2 of purchase.
Now it looks like they sell mostly phones. I can get those anywhere cheaper.
Evidently a few fans ended up naming their daughters Sussudio. Phil Collins apologizes for that.
It doesn’t mean anything, Collins was just making up words to go along with a rhythm track, and that is what he came up with that fit. He was planning to find a real word to replace it, but ended up just keeping that lyric.
David Byrne told a similar story about the Talking Heads album “Speaking in Tongues”, saying he just made up nonsense words to the songs at first, and later replaced them with real words that fit.
Nobody ‘builds’ a radio anymore. What ‘need’ does Radio Shack fill?
The worst smelling man I ever met in my life worked at RadioShack.
Or, you can buy a stereo patch cable for just 4x Fry's or 5x online price.
Radio Shack needed a major restructuring a long time ago.
My opinion of where they should have gone is into education, in partnership with technical and trade schools. In addition to their stores, they could have electronics labs that would double as places where businesses that were hiring technicians could come to recruit talent, after seeing them doing hands on, on their systems.
It would be a win-win-win. The tech and trade schools would get their graduates placed, the tech firms would get good quality techs, and Radio Shack would be in the middle, providing lots of parts and systems, from oscilloscopes to power supplies to computers.
I haven’t seen a radio shack store in 15 years.
RS lost its appeal for me when they started selling prepaid cellphones and catering to the bottom feeders.
I haven’t set foot in a RS in many years and see no reason to do so.
Wonder if it was the same guy I worked with in the production department of a TV network? I couldn’t resist.
The guy in question worked there just about all his life, nobody else would tolerate him. He was weird but I think harmless.
Not a bad business model. I hire technicians for my company and that would have been a great pool of talent to draw from. As it is, I have trouble finding qualified candidates to fill my positions. They should have made you CEO!
I have not gone into a Radio Shack unless for some simple thing like a fuse holder for a long, long time. I once bought a telephone answering machine from them back when they had tape cassettes in them. It quickly developed an intermittent problem which always showed up when an important customer called me and could not leave a message. I took it to the store and explained my problem and the guy tried it, naturally it worked perfectly so he handed it back to me and said, “It’s working just like it’s supposed to.” I looked at the idiot and said, “Of course it is, I told you the problem is intermittent.” He was no help so I took it back and tried to use it again and the next day it failed at the worst time possible. I went and bought a machine somewhere else and went back to Radio Shack after looking in to make sure there were some customers there and I walked in, laid it on the counter and in a booming voice told the guy, “This piece of junk is the reason I will never buy anything from Radio Shack again, you refused to help me when it had an intermittent problem, so here, take the piece of garbage back and keep it.” I looked around at everyone in the store to make sure they all got the message and I turned and walked out.
He now works at my grocery store.
The going out of business sale should be good. I bought a lot of good ham radio equipment cheap when they quit carrying that.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.